That day, as usual, she moved purposefully through the room, straightening each silverware setting. There was never a day, Tuesday through Sunday, that the restaurant didn’t welcome customers with immaculately arranged silverware, tables and chairs, and a soft hello from Maggie Day.
April managed the kitchen; Maggie the dining room. Both had long ago given up trying to manage Mac.
Maggie frowned when he came in, and pointed toward the far wall. A woman sat at one of the tables, with her back to the door. She was sipping coffee.
Maggie arched an eyebrow under the bent brim of her hat. ‘Can you believe the brass on that woman?’ she whispered. ‘She had the nerve to say you invited her.’
‘I suppose I did,’ he said.
TWENTY-SIX
‘Jen Jessup, it’s a pleasure,’ Mac said, sitting down with his own cup of coffee.
The slender newswoman, auburn-haired, dark-eyed and at least ten years younger than Mac, studied him. ‘You really mean that?’
Mac smiled. ‘Not a chance in hell.’
‘Why an interview about your indictment now? You’ve been avoiding me since it was first announced.’
‘You’ve been biased against me ever since I ran for mayor.’
‘You were a carpetbagger, seeking to settle a personal score.’ She took a tiny, digital recorder from her purse. ‘No matter. Give me all of it.’
He took her through it all, ending with his most recent conversation with his lawyer.
‘You’re really going to countersue?’
‘Ryerson Wainwright distorted my occasionally being too tired to drive home as a means of political payback.’
‘For pinning him to the mat for questionable expenses?’
‘It’s pathetic.’
‘It seems simple. You violated Linder County’s residency law for trustees by residing here, albeit on a cot.’
‘For a few hundred in expenses? It’s an obvious sham.’
‘Were you planning to run for mayor of Grand Point while you were still collecting compensation as a Linder County trustee?’
‘Of course not. My decision to run against Pete Moore came after I’d left the board and moved here. He tried to slice off part of my parking lot for a turning lane – which, by the way, would improve egress from his own vacant land across the street.’
‘You’re using me now to announce your countersuit, firing a warning shot across Ryerson Wainwright’s bow.’
‘You bet.’
‘Fair enough.’ She switched off the recorder and put it in her purse.
‘Betty Jo Dean,’ he said.
‘I’ve heard you’ve been asking around about her,’ she said.
‘Does the case stink?’
‘Why ask me?’
‘I was given the article you wrote on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the murders.’
‘Lots of deaths that summer of 1982.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Never mind.’
‘Nobody wants to talk about it,’ he said.
‘Go see your current sheriff, Jimmy Bales. Or better still, Clamp Reems. He was in charge of the investigation.’
‘I stopped in to see Reems. He wasn’t in.’
‘And now you’re waiting for his call?’ She smiled.
‘I’m not that naive. There’s precious little on the Web. The Rockford newspaper microfilms have disappeared from the library. All I have is that article you wrote in 2007.’
‘Bella asked me to do that.’
‘Bella?’
‘Bella Dean Telkin, Betty Jo’s older sister. She called me, saying I should write something about why the murders were never solved. I was in sixth grade when they happened, so I had to research, like you’re doing now. I had difficulties, like you’re having. No one wanted to talk, not in Grand Point. Sheriff Bales said the case was too old to fuss with. Clamp Reems talked to me, but he didn’t give me anything that hadn’t been in the papers. I drove to Rockford and looked at their police files. They were filled with discounted leads. I went to the Register-Star. None of their old reporters from back then is still working. I read every bit of their old copy. It was a sensational case in 1982, and it went nowhere.’
‘The case that died too fast?’
‘They say none of the leads panned out.’
‘Your piece was choppy, at the end.’
‘Horace Wiggins, here in Grand Point, wanted no part of it. I got it run only in DeKalb, where I live, but even there they insisted on whacking off the last couple of paragraphs.’
‘Why?’
‘I editorialized, questioning why the case had been allowed to die. The editor was right to cut that. It was opinion, not journalism.’
He walked her out, but she called an hour later. ‘We’re set to meet with Sheriff Bales tomorrow morning. You can ask him what happened to the investigation.’
‘Why did you set it up?’
‘I’d like to do an update.’
‘That nobody might want?’
‘I’ll still get to see the look on your face when Jimmy Bales comes across the desk at you.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
‘Bullshit, absolute bullshit,’ Sheriff Jimmy Bales yelled at Jen Jessup. Then, turning, purple-faced, to Mac, ‘You ought to know better, too, even for a damned-’ Suddenly, Bales shut his mouth.
‘For a damned what… upcoming convict, perhaps?’
‘Choose your own words, Mr Mayor.’ He slurred the title – may-yore – like it was profane.
‘You had so many leads,’ Mac said.
‘Clamp did; it was before my time. And he chased down every damned one of them. Why don’t you go ask him why this case fell apart?’
‘I will. But it’s your department now. What have you done recently?’
‘I was eighteen when Betty Jo got murdered.’
‘Same age as her, about?’
‘A year older. I knew her. We all knew her.’
‘All the more reason you’d want to find her killer.’
‘With what money and what personnel? We’ve got budget cuts. People would have my head if I dropped current crimes to go sniffing around an old case that couldn’t be solved even when the clues were fresh.’
‘You’d rather they believe anyone can get away with murder in Peering County if they just wait it out?’
Bales snuck an anxious glance at Jen Jessup, no doubt afraid she’d use that in print. ‘You’re twisting my words. You know damn well what I mean.’
‘What’s in the case report?’
Bales opened a side desk drawer and pulled out a brown accordion file. ‘Not much,’ he said.
He spread the contents on his desk. There was a thick stack of typed, ‘City of Rockford – Department of Police’ letterhead sheets, bound together by a large black clip. Another twenty sheets of handwritten notes, in different sizes and colors, were loose. There was one black-and-white photograph.
Bales waved at the mess on his desk. ‘Be my guest,’ he said, with just the slightest smile.
Mac looked at Jen Jessup, who so far had said nothing. She shook her head. ‘I went through it all for that piece I wrote. Other than the crime scene photo, there’s nothing there but dead leads.’
Mac flipped through the sheaf of Rockford police reports. Each was an officer’s report detailing follow-up on a particular tip. The leads were widely varied, and ranged from a report that Pauly Pribilski once dated the ex-wife of an army sharpshooter to the incidence of a seventeen-year old Rockford boy caught trying to steal a box of.38 caliber bullets. Most of the leads had been sent up to Rockford by Chief Deputy Wilbur Reems.
‘Clamp sent leads to the Rockford police?’ Mac asked.
‘Pauly Pribilski was one of their locals. They were anxious to help,’ Bales said. ‘Being as our department was understaffed then, like now, Clamp laid anything he could on the Rockford boys. Besides, this department had plenty of local leads to deal with, not to mention the town being up for grabs, what with all the reporters and nervous townspeople. And don’t forget, Delbert Milner died right at the beginning of it.’